Prior art has concentrated on non-standardized, unsecured, unsynchronized, ad hoc and often chaotic client intake, conclusion, communications and project matter assignment as between the providers of professional services and their customers or clients. Typically, a prospective client contacts a SP with a request to provide services and then a series of communications ensues defining the professional relationship desired by these parties. The SP memorializes agreed-to scope, terms and conditions of the relationship by an agreement governing the retention of the SP and provision of the services to the client, usually this takes the form of a letter to be acknowledged or executed and exchanged by the parties. Support personnel assisting SPs and clients may introduce errors or other problems. Miscommunications, costs and penalties attach, for example delay in providing the desired services, under the prior art. It typically challenges both SPs and customers or clients to modify the scope, terms and conditions of the service provision as the professional relationship progresses over time. In the legal field for example, SPs such as attorneys may be exposed to liability for matters, tasks and projects the attorney believed were concluded or otherwise terminated where the client had reason to believe the representation was ongoing and the attorney failed to transmit proper notice regarding her impression the provision of professional services had ended. During the time leading up to and the period when services are provided, SPs and their clients typically communicate haphazardly via landline telephone, mobile telephone, email, SMS messaging, letters, couriers and postal mail. Some customers or clients may prefer certain communications means while others might prefer different means, and a SP may need to search through the separate means in volume to find important or time-sensitive information. The problematic issues arising from the various, separate modalities and functions have not been previously resolved, and the disadvantages of the prior art would be obvious to a SP having ordinary exposure in the pertinent field.
The advantages of the present invention can be readily observed by understanding the following brief description of the invention. The Service enables a SP to initiate the process of engaging a client digitally by creating a client from any web-enabled device. The SP then may create a digital matter record for the client. Once the SP has created the client and has created the matter for such client, the SP may select the terms of the prospective engagement and then is enabled to prompt the Service to send an engagement letter to the client digitally regarding the matter. Upon the SP prompting the Service to engage a client in a particular matter, the Service sends a responsive and/or actionable HTML engagement letter to the client. Upon the client's receipt of the electronic message comprised of the responsive and/or actionable HTML engagement letter, the client is enabled to accept the engagement letter merely by clicking and/or selecting a consent and/or acceptance button (“Client Acceptance”).
The Client Acceptance triggers the Service to initiate discrete processes contemporaneously or in close temporal proximity for the purposes of memorializing the acceptance, confirmation and/or ratification of the engagement—one of which is the creation of a private collaboration portal on the Service for the particular client matter for which there was Client Acceptance. In such private collaboration portal, the SP and client may digitally communicate and share documents with one another.
If the SP determines that a client relationship or a matter should conclude or otherwise terminate, the SP may prompt the Service to conclude the matter. At such prompt, the Service initiates discrete processes to conclude the matter, and the invention restricts and/or limits further collaboration between the SP and the client in such matter on the Service and digitally memorializes the conclusion of the matter.
Clearly there is a need for distributed systems and methods to automatically enable engagement, matter generation, conclusion and communications facilities. The present invention addresses each concern above and it provides numerous advantages, including those set forth below.